Lycurgus
Lycurgus (/laɪˈkɜːrɡəs/; Ancient Greek: Λυκοῦργος Lykourgos) was the legendary lawgiver of Sparta, credited with the formation of its eunomia ('good order'),[1] involving political, economic, and social reforms to produce a military-oriented Spartan society in accordance with the Delphic oracle.
A multitude of ancient sources mention Lycurgus; it is, however, troubling inasmuch as those accounts evolved according to then-contemporary political priorities and that they are profoundly inconsistent.
[4][5] However, Lycurgus does not feature in the earliest preserved Spartan source – the poet Tyrtaeus – which has led many historians today to doubt his historicity:[6] for example, Massimo Nafissi in A companion to Sparta writes he is "probably mythical".
[17] One artefact, the Disc of Iphitos, also allegedly documents Lycurgus' involvement with the formation of the Olympic Games and would therefore place him c. 776 BC, per the philosopher Aristotle.
His legend was also constantly reworked and expanded through the course of the classical Greek period by securing for Spartans in their times divine sanction and greater legitimacy for actions which they claimed to be a return to Lycurgus' laws.
In Aristotle's version, recounted by Plutarch, Lycurgus leads his followers into the city and occupies the agora to impose his laws; backed by Apolline divine approval, he forces the tyrannical Charilaus to accede to them and institutes the gerousia.
[33] Plutarch's narrative presented in his own voice instead consolidates prior disparate stories into a general upsurge of support from the kings, the people, and the aristocracy.
[43] The economic reforms, which are supposed to have made Spartan citizens equal, never happened and were invented to legitimise redistributive policies in the Hellenistic period.
However, the grammatical construction of preserved rhetra is consistent with it being part of the original text, a view taken by Massimo Nafissi in Companion to archaic Greece, believing that the idea that the set-aside provision was later inserted was itself a fabrication of the fourth century BC.
Citizens were required to contribute to the mess hall's pantries with a substantial amount of food, wine, and money; failure or inability to do so would entail loss of citizenship.
[50] A relatively old tradition, predating the Hellenistic Spartan reformers Agis IV and Cleomenes III as well as likely Herodotus, claimed that Lycurgus' imposition of the mess halls created a citizen body of some 9,000 men.
They became the classical syssitia after sumptuary restrictions, compulsory contributions from poorer citizens who previously abstained, and intermixture of rich and poor shortly before 500 BC.
[54][55] In fact, archaeological discoveries at Sparta – showing the decline of Spartan art expressed on vases as well as a sudden expansion of agricultural labour in the mid-sixth century BC – suggest that much of the communitarian reforms attributed to Lycurgus may date to that time.
[57] Land inequality increased through Spartan history, mediated by conquests abroad which allowed poorer citizens to retain a reasonable standard of living.
[61] Lycurgus is also supposed to have ensured the austere lifestyle of the Spartans by banning the use of gold and silver coins, requiring a currency made of iron.
[62] Xenophon claimed that this meant acquisition of wealth became too bulky to hide; Plutarch believed that this was to make it impossible, or at least difficult, for Spartans to purchase luxury goods.
Usage of gold and silver at Sparta is implied by other reports that the kings were fined in drachma and talents as well as by Spartan state rewards and ransoms.
Plutarch's attempted to reconcile the evidence by depicting the Spartans allowing gold and silver for public use but retaining the allegedly Lycurgan restrictions on private use.
[65] Ancient authors claimed of the Spartans a general aversion to commerce, which was also attributed to Lycurgus, who was supposed to have "forbade free men to touch anything to do with making money".
[66] This likely emerged from the fact that Spartan citizens, the spartiates or homoioi, were a leisurely class of land owners who looked down on manual labourers and craftsmen.
[70] Plutarch also claims that Lycurgus imposed sumptuary legislation, prohibiting foreign artisans from residing at Sparta and restricting the tools with which Spartan houses could be built, to encourage simplicity.
Archaeological evidence broadly supports the notion that Spartans practiced uniform burial without grave goods, albeit with exceptions for generals and Olympic victors.
[82] Though the story is rejected by Plutarch,[83] Lycurgus is also said to have instituted the crypteia, a select[further explanation needed] group of young men tasked with clandestinely killing helots in the night.
[87] For these achievements, which they viewed as having facilitated the emergence of Sparta as the most powerful state in Greece, Lycurgus was honoured with a hero cult,[2] which may have developed slowly into the Roman imperial period into full godhood.
[99] The republican views of Niccolò Machiavelli trended toward the Lycurgan "mixed constitution" but this was not necessarily a through-line in Renaissance European political thought.
[100] Other thinkers of the period hailed Lycurgan politics as building a stable polity dedicated to simplicity, unity, and the communal interest – attributing to the Spartans, not necessarily rightly, universal education and equality among citizens – while also noting the cruelty of the agoge and denigration of autonomy, especially in contrast to democratic Athens.
[102] The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who derived most of his knowledge of Lycurgus from Plutarch's biography, viewed the figure positively as standing for an austere civil morality acting for the collective good.
[104] Diderot, the main editor of the Encyclopédie, was more pessimistic, saying that Lycurgan laws "created monks bearing arms" while branding the system as a whole "an atrocity" and "incompatible with a large... [or] commercial state".
The German classicist Karl Julius Beloch, for example, was one of the first to take a highly critical view of Sparta, suggesting that Lycurgus was a fiction and his Great Rhetra was a fabrication.
[109] In the aftermath of the First World War German nationalism embraced Sparta and Lycurgus, seeing it as a locus of heroism, physicality, racial purity, and struggle.
